PBN: Maersk and Sea-Land lines, major shipping companies, recently
dropped the port at Quonset Point from their list of prospective
locations for an East Coast container port. Did the state even stand a
chance given the amount of development that still needs to take place
there?
Swen: Well, the timing was early for us with Sea-Land and Maersk. I
think the only answer to that question is to look at the business. What
is the business? The business is moving boxes to the East Coast of the
United States. The existing capacity is just totally inadequate. There’s
another 10 million boxes that are going to come to the East Coast in the
next five or six years and there’s no place for them to go. So we
absolutely have a shot just because there’s such a demand for the
product that we have.
For Sea-Land and Maersk, their contracts are up very soon – one in a
couple of months and the other in about a year. So they needed to make
some decisions quickly. And the fact that we are just coming to the end
of the stakeholders process, it’s tough for them to say with any
certainty this is what they’re going to end up with here. So as we get
through the stakeholders process and agree on some port options then
we’ll go into the permitting process. The closer you get to permits, the
more real you become.
I think that when people look at the infrastructure here they’re
extremely impressed. The deep water that we have, the short channel, the
proximity to the large markets, the rail and the road, infrastructure is
all phenomenal, among the best on the East Coast. But the freight rail
improvement project is not going to be done for another year and a half
to two years. The (connector) road (linking Quonset Point to Routes 4
and 95) won’t be done for another four or five years.
So these people are thinking about the next hundred years, not the next
two. The freight rail improvement project is funded so they know that’s
going to happen. The (Route) 403 road is almost funded. Fifty percent of
it is fully funded and the other half I believe will be. So those pieces
are already in place. When they make decisions they just assume, okay we
have the freight rail, we have the road. Now what about permitting, the
dredging and the port infrastructure? So that’s the part that there’s
still uncertainty around. And the less uncertainty the better to make
business decisions.
If we had the permits in hand right now, I think there’s a very good
chance that Sea-Land and Maersk would have been much more interested.
And I believe that the stakeholders process will be successful in
outlining some reasonable alternatives.
What will determine the end of the stakeholders process and when is it
likely to come?
The definitive end is sometime in late February, early March. We’re
going to have a series of meetings where we go through the alternatives.
What we’ve done is we’ve raised a number of environmental issues and a
number of business issues and what we have to do is go through a series
of proposals and evaluate them on both of those sets of criteria.
There’s 65 stakeholders now so there’s no proposals or set of facts that
everyone will agree to. That will never happen. But I believe that
there’ll be a set of outcomes on a number of the different proposals
that will be grossly acceptable to most people. And that’s the whole
point. The idea of a democracy is not that one person gets to veto any
proposal. On the other hand, the idea of a democracy is also not to pick
up a project where there’s significant opposition across the board.
Has the stakeholders project been worth it judging by what you’ve seen?
Or has it only served to slow things down?
What I’ve seen is not necessarily a change in fundamental position. When
you have a project of this scope, it’s really complicated. So if you and
I don’t agree on something that’s really complicated we can choose to
not even talk about the same issues and continue to disagree forever.
When you’re forced to sit at a table and go through and address each
issue and say what is the reality – not what do you think you believe or
what has somebody told you – what you see is not that people say “you
know you’re right. It’s a really good idea.” What you’ve done is you’ve
taken the issues that people disagree upon based on ignorance or just
lack of information and you’ve really limited them.
One of the reasons why the stakeholders process makes sense is whenever
you’re doing a public project like this – even though it’s going to be
privately financed – there are a lot of people who care about this. The
stakeholders process is democracy in action. And democracy is not known
for its speed. It’s not as fast as you’d like. But what it does is it
gets a lot of information out and that’s important. And also people
should have a lot of faith that there’s no hidden agenda here. There’s
no back-room dealing. This is all completely out in the open.
What we hope is that everybody will have a chance to get in on the
ground floor, if you will, so that when we get into the permitting
process there will be less disruption and less delay and less
obstruction. If that works, then we could actually save time down the
road.
I’m hopeful that it will actually make the whole process shorter. I
believe that. You don’t get to some sort of dramatic event as fast, but
you should get to the actual building of the port faster if you’re
patient and you’re willing to be open. Sometimes it is frustrating.
Sometimes it does go slowly. But overall it’s been very good. I think
it’s served its purposes.
